


Threads

by crybabyprincess



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 01:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17757140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crybabyprincess/pseuds/crybabyprincess
Summary: She used to dream of his happy future. In the dreams, he was with another woman.It didn't hurt to watch them.'Oh, she's just future me'NaruHina AU





	Threads

Sakura was her best friend.

Sakura grew up in the house behind her's. Only a few trees separated them like a passageway to another world. Their giggles carried by summer breeze through an open window. A place to run to play when there was fighting, yelling at Hinata's. Sakura's mother was warm with honey hair and a fairy's voice. Sakura's house smelled of cinnamon spice and vanilla orchid. There, Hinata would eat cake and paint her nails, almost like a 'real girl'. Almost as naturally as Sakura. Sakura had brilliant jade green upturned eyes. She drenched her pillowy lips with candy syrup liquid gloss. Her perfect shoulder length tendrils were steeped in copper and mulberry wine. The artificial color was Hinata's idea, but Sakura embodied it. Radiated in it.

Hinata wasn't a tomboy, but she was only feminine in her delicate nature. In her weaknesses. In her fear. Hinata's mother died when she was only 10. After that, Hinata didn't wear dresses every day, anymore. No one would meticulously brush and braid her long straight hair. No one would answer her questions about herself, and she stopped asking. Her mother was lovely and broken. Her kindness trembled in her voice and chortle laugh like velvet. She would collect stray animals and eat fruit straight from trees and tend her rose garden. She had terrible thorns piercing her all the time. And she wished herself away in a liquid dream, for the pain to stop, for the future to be void.

Hinata was like her dad. But her dad's love felt like a punishment. They built walls around themselves until they couldn't speak to each other at all. It was conflict coated in silence. He was haunted by ghosts of himself, and a better life he could have lived. If things had been different. If things hadn't been so hard. If he chose something else. If.

The loss of control. The loss of self. Watching someone she loved wish to leave her. Hinata felt the world slipping out from under her feet so many times she learned how to need nothing. Reject kindness. Refuse help. She locked herself up, with her steamer trunk of secrets. When people would worry for her, she'd lie for their sake. She was fine. Always in control of herself. She couldn't bear the look of pity, the look of sadness, when she could see her reflection in others. Her child eyes burdened by the weight of the world. She'd blind herself so people could no longer see into her soul.

Sakura was her friend. They walked to school together. They ate lunch together. But Sakura had walls, too. Their friendship was deep in it's superficiality. Don't ask, don't tell. If one of them was crying, the other would be silent. Sometimes they just walked.

Then, Sakura had a boyfriend.

Sakura had less time to walk with Hinata. Neither of them acknowledged it, but it gave weight to the air between them. Hinata loved Sakura, and she was genuinely happy for her happiness. She didn't feel any twinge of jealousy, she just felt put on a shelf. But the shelf was where Hinata felt at home. If Hinata's life was a movie, she would still play supporting cast to someone else. Sometimes Sakura would make the extra effort to dust her off, and bring her out for the day. Hinata didn't revel in the feeling of hindering the two with her presence, but she liked Sakura's boyfriend. He was headstrong and funny and brimming with boyish charm and confidence.

He was her friend first, after all.

She remembered seeing him across the room. Boys acting like the kids they were with attitudes of who they thought they should be. Loud and obnoxious. She was slightly fixated on his spikes of straw hair and still skinny, prepubescent frame. Weird, she thought. To notice. She was feeling silly too, with her group of girls. Sweet Sakura. Boycrazed Ino. Sakura and Ino took music lessons after school. Tenten played sports. Classic Hinata watched the other girls carefully and mimicked their schoolgirl behavior. If Hinata could try on their clothes and skip the 'eating' part of lunch and buy stickers at the mall like they did, she could become almost like a 'real girl', she thought. She could bury the old woman behind her eyes. She hummed a familiar tune and skipped until she felt herself caught in the wind, unencumbered for a single moment. Her tune endowed a sudden echo, and her head snapped to her side to lock eyes with a boy with straw hair and slender frame. He was mimicking her.

Something broke and pulled apart inside her, for a moment. For a girl who had felt every emotion, every pain and sorrow, every sensation of the human heart in her short life and what felt like dozens of tragic past ones, she was feeling something unlike anything she could place before. It was shock in slow motion. It was a familiarity, nostalgic like a memory she hadn't made yet. It was a force that jolted her so fiercely her body rejected it. Her head jerked away, her eyes the last part of her to receive the message. She had looked directly into the sun and survived. Her belly trembled with uncertainty, and faint questions. If divine energy inserts itself in to our lives, she felt it protect her then. Put it away, somewhere. But there was collateral damage. He bounced away with a smile that seared itself in her long term memory. Permanent, like a tattoo.

He was funny. She was a bit dark, and a great audience. Her uncharacteristically loud laugh. It was the only time she didn't feel like someone wearing a different girl, like a suit made of skin. He laughed at the things she said too. There was something to that, something that tugged at her inside, to be heard. To be seen. A mutual understanding, a layer rarely touched. A connection that cut deep, regardless of how little or much time they spent together. They would always return there, effortlessly. He was easy to be with. Hinata didn't feel lust when she looked at him. She didn't write about him in her diary. He didn't look anything like those boys. He didn't act gloomy and brooding like those boys. But she had daydreams about... someone. About a White Knight who would rescue her someday, if she was patient, if she kept the old woman inside alive long enough to meet him. She wished for him with every penny she threw in a fountain, every birthday candle she blew out, every shooting star in the sky. Like a prayer, over and over and over again.

Sakura kissed Naruto in the fall. Hinata was there. She didn't feel anything about it. Which was strange, she thought, considering she felt something about everything.

He was a wonderful boyfriend to Sakura. He doted on her. He wasn't ashamed to be seen holding her hand in public, in front of their mutual friends. A familial group formed around them, the way people always felt drawn to Naruto. She was always at the forefront of his mind, when he was making plans, when he was envisioning himself. Naruto would be something someday, and Sakura would be next to him. He had much to do. Her name constantly fell from his lips. When he was bursting with happiness and pride. When he worried.

Naruto was kind to Hinata. She could feel the guilt that pooled in Sakura when she would acknowledge that her time with Naruto left Hinata alone. It was silly, Hinata thought. They were alone when they were together, anyway. She was just more on her own now. But. Hinata recognized the look in Sakura's eyes. The pity. 'I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.' she'd chant. Sakura would drag her out with the two of them. On their day dates. Hinata mostly felt sorry for Naruto, to be third-wheeling, though he'd always brush it off without second thought. He was himself with Sakura in front of Hinata, no matter what. It didn't make Hinata feel ... bad, but it didn't feel good, either. So she would turn down more and more invitations. Until.

'You should date Kiba!'

A solution to the Hinata problem. Yes, she would love Kiba. Yes, then she could stay with the two of them, her guardians, and they could share each other's happiness. Sakura wouldn't have to feel sad for her. Naruto could fix Sakura's Hinata problem.

Hinata gave something over to herself. She adored Kiba. She wanted to watch over Kiba. She saw something beautiful and broken inside him. She wanted someone to pull the deep threads of her soul, and Kiba shared her darkness. He could bear it, and she could bear him. The weight of their respective sadness would overwhelm them. She'd willingly drown in it. She could be that for him, be something for someone in need.

Kiba seemed to kind of, like, Hinata. Most days. Others, he rejected her bluntly. But Kiba didn't know what he wanted from this, or anything. Kiba had dreams that he would never attain, because of circumstances in his life, because of someone else's fault, because things just wouldn't go his way. Kiba gives in. Kiba gives up. Kiba floats along while things happen to him, rather than making them happen. Kiba is waiting for the right place and right time that are never to come along, and for that he suffers. He chooses brooding and angst. He keeps Hinata close, but never lets her in.

Naruto talks to Hinata when he's having problems with Sakura. Sakura is always mad at him, he says. He never does enough of the 'right' things for her. Hinata watches him work for pennies while he works on everything else, only to stack them enough to buy presents for Sakura. He wants to be that man for her, everything she needs at her whim. She smiles and points to the objects that fill her up, and he obliges, greedy for her satisfaction. But those things, the working, take time and attention away from Sakura too. Hinata starts to feel hollow. A girl's best friend is supposed to do something in this kind of situation. A 'real girl' knows how to defend her best friend's honor. To scold her boyfriend, to praise her instead. But Hinata feels void. Hinata can't comprehend how Sakura feels, what she desires. She doesn't know how to advise Naruto, so she just listens. She encourages him. Because Naruto is a wonderful, magnificent person, and Sakura will see him for who he is. Sakura will appreciate him, for everything he wants to be, and they will be happy together always. A tear collects like rainwater in the corner of her eye... she's cried rivers of tears before, but never lacked a reason. She wonders.

Sakura and Naruto start asking Hinata to spend more time with them. The three of them become almost inseparable. It feels comfortable and coddled and strange, she still feels her overstep. But its Naruto who encourages her more, to come along. Hinata knows he must feel guilty about Kiba. Hinata is his friend too, after all. He values Hinata's opinion, and her sincerity, and her ability to stay, always. She thinks of herself as a cockroach in that way.

Naruto takes the two of them home, one day. One day like all the others. Something about the golden hour takes hold of Naruto's figure as she walks behind Sakura, next to him. Hinata can't look away. The gold flecks on the tops of his wrists, the back of his hand as he takes Sakura's into his. Large, sturdy, brilliant. Hinata thinks that someday, she can hope for her own Naruto. She catches herself, of course, not -Naruto-, but her own something. Someone. She puts the thought away.

Toneri changes everything. For the first time in her life, someone wants Hinata. He is foreign, obscure, unfamiliar. Not just to her, but everyone in her inner circle. Her world doesn't know him. For the first time in her life, Hinata sees the chance to be someone new entirely. With someone who doesn't know her whole story, cover to cover. Someone who never witnessed her failures, or faults. Rebirth. A hand reaching out to her's Hinata cuts her hair wild and short.

Sakura does not like Toneri. She tries to tell Hinata in so many words, but they fall flat. Hinata steps over them. She wears a blindfold. Everyone around her, they didn't seem to notice her suffering before. Their interest now almost irritates her. Toneri wants her. Toneri brings her into his world, and Hinata finds her grip easily loosen from her own. Sakura finally cracks and tells Hinata with the most truth she has ever brought into their friendship. But Hinata, she wants to solve her own problem, for once. Remove herself from the equation of Sakura's relationship, from her own locked up existence. Hinata breaks herself open.

Sakura was right. Toneri is everything and nothing all at once. Toneri is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Hinata's pieces lose their meaning. Their value. He takes everything she has and abandons her. Then he brings her close again to pour salt in her wounds. Pain drains from her body with such intensity she considers that she may actually die of a broken heart. It cascades until she is a near lifeless cavern, a throbbing cavity. She wanders, silently pleading that 'something bad' actually happens to her. Something physical to pull her under, to surrender herself to. A reason to wear a different wound, just to take the edge off the one destroying her. She becomes reckless, her mind hazy. She can't find her footing anymore. She grieves when she begins to profoundly understand her mother. If she didn't exist in her new life, did she remain to exist at all? Had she ever been there at all. Were her memories a collection of lies she convinced herself were real? Yes, he did kiss you frantically, once. He did call for you, voice barely tethered and desperate. You were there, you were important, why wasn't that okay?

Of all the unexpected, it is Naruto that steps in for her.

He tells Hinata that Toneri is the one missing out. It would be his loss. What Hinata feels is real, love. Was it? She ponders, searching for the bottom of her feelings. Her understanding of everything slips through her fingers these days. He's giving her the benefit of the doubt, she decides, and it's kindness. The reality is, that she's selfish. She wasn't giving as much as she was hoping to take. To fill herself. To wear love like a purpose. To prove she exists at all. Then, in an instant, he lifts the fog. He asks Hinata why she's choosing a life that isn't for her. He tells Hinata, simply, that she can choose anything she wants. Even after her wrong turns she can still walk a different path. For the first time, she realizes that is an option. He reassures her. His steady hands stopped her unraveling. A clarity she's never had. She seeks daybreak for the first time, like a miracle.

The snow still piles up in her heart, but she keeps walking. She makes terrible, terrifying decisions that change her direction, but she survives. Routine. Responsibility. Some small opportunities to recognize her own worth, she keeps at the small things she's good at. Spring is coming, spring is coming.

Sakura and Naruto end their relationship. Hinata hasn't been in contact her much lately, but she knows the ebbs and flows of Sakura, and she knows she feels exquisite sorrow in her freedom, but is thirsty for more - for different. Sakura is cyclical like the seasons themselves. Sakura craves the danger of the thrill, the new, the chase. Steady Naruto never had a chance in that.

Hinata's admiration of Naruto has new tiers. He is rising higher, still. From his perch he still managed to grace her with his acknowledgement. He saw her. He sees her. She's strong. She will be strong. It's so stupid, she thinks in her wryness, that he'll never know he saved her. His words were her life raft. She could never thank him for that, and he couldn't even comprehend her feelings if he tried. It was surely nothing to him, a passing whim, despite it being everything to her. And just like that, his enchantment blew warm early summer breeze into her heart.

'You changed me.'

'Your smile saved me.'

Her body moved on its own when she saw him. Drew her in to his chest, her arms wrapping tightly. Her ear to his rib cage. An impulse she didn't recognize until she felt his fingers on her arms, peeling her away. Embarrassing, confusing. Her heartbeats would pound harder and harder, like the skeletons she locked away were trying to make their escape. What... was this. The disconnection was loosening its stranglehold. The feelings were washing up as alluvion through her body. They were hopefulness, a wave of happiness and a wake of pain. Sweet and sour. The love hurt differently. The pain didn't swell with jealousy or wrath or retribution. A softer ache.

He confessed first. 'You're the only girl for me'.

Out of nowhere. Well, somewhere Hinata couldn't look directly at. Hinata's long practiced reactionary mechanisms took over. Put it away, lock it up. She held the feelings out over the fire for a while. She'd lose Sakura, for good. Honestly, Sakura would encourage her happiness, Sakura wouldn't be an obstacle, she knew instinctively. But Hinata wouldn't be able to accept it. The guilt of betraying her girlhood, the one they built together. The skin Sakura had helped shape for her friend to wear, and the silence of the secrets they mutually kept from each other.

However. Standing in front of her was this, open trunk. Naruto's. He had nothing to hide. No unspoken understandings. He wanted her recognition, to be heard. He loved the way Hinata listened, the way Hinata always laughed. The way Hinata pushed forward, taking nothing with her, and encouraged him to do the same. He wanted a soft light at his side while he challenged the world head-on. A White Knight.

Hinata considered, maybe this, maybe he was inevitable. How could she defy the stars she prayed to, when they granted her the very essence of her desires. In so much unexpected and beyond. Who would she become if she chose, 'no', first? Would they circle back together anyway, her a decade worse off, more calloused and worn than she felt now? How could she bask in his sunlight then? Fighting fate, huh. No. She'd change. She'd be enough right now.

His love was like a thick, warm coat many sizes too large. It overwhelmed her like a child playing dress up. She was used to wearing something that didn't quite suit her, but she wondered if she would be able to grow in to it. What is it, he sees? In her. She would find it. The scars she earned, nostalgic badges of felt stitched on her dress. Some days they would fight back to swallow her again, but she'd push on. To be the haven he deserved, a safe home to return to, every time. Every time, she promised. She couldn't fade away.

He pulled the strings of her soul close, and tangled them up with his own. They tied them together. Hinata had seen fragility in herself before, but now held enough experience to know they stitched her very existence together like a rag doll. It was a love that existed before them, she realized, and it would extend beyond them. She was merely born a vessel for it.

Healing wounds takes time, and for Hinata it takes decades. She was undeserving. How could he love her through it? How could he love someone who irritated herself so exhaustively on a daily basis? One day, an older Kiba says something about 'if' she had just waited for him. She breathes. No. Naruto was not 'in lieu of'. 'In absence of'. Not in another life.

Something clicked.

Naruto had fallen in love with her past and future all at once. The person she would become, someday.

They were just kids then, but he had fallen in love with a much older version of Hinata. Maybe the one she'd become after she realized. Or one he wouldn't meet for years still. Yet.

Soulmates don't exist in a linear timeline. They are past and present and future simultaneously.

They form a ring together around the thread of time and spin up and down and along it, embracing all of it.

Transcending.

Recognizing.

Oh it's you. It's going to be you.

Hinata understood why her soul felt so ancient all her life. Why all the locked doors lead her through the darkness to the light behind the only open one. Her trajectory forged in pain, too, was a gift. I'll find you. I'll find you. Love nourished by the change of seasons in this world. Elevated through the dimensions.


End file.
